Gaza, Through Fresh Eyes

GAZA — For some, it’s the relative modernity — the jazzy cellphone stores and pricey restaurants. For others, it’s the endless beaches with children whooping it up. But for nearly everyone who visits Gaza, often with worry of danger and hostility, what’s surprising is the fact that daily life, while troubled, often has the staggering quality of the very ordinary.

Cut off by embargos imposed by Israel to the north and Egypt to the south, ruled by Hamas with its focus on Islam, Gaza in the past few years has felt like an island adrift, often forgotten and neglected in the talk of Middle East peace, recalled in moments of violence aimed at it or from it.

So when Katie Orlinsky, a freelance photographer, chose to spend two weeks here, her first time not only in a Palestinian area but in the Middle East, she wasn’t sure what to expect other than sorrow and destruction. She was not wrong on either score. But what most struck her, she says, was the depth of human experience.

“From the bullet hole in the wall above the child playing on his outdated computer in a middle-class home, to the couple having dinner sipping Coca-Cola smuggled in from Egypt, the situation in Gaza — the war, the blockade, Hamas — touches everyone,” she said. “I saw energetic, smart young women learning about the world in university, and I saw young girls who spent their days sorting through trash to find reusable materials to sell to factories for a few measly shekels. I saw happy families taking a break from their daily struggle to have a picnic on the beach, and met a traumatized family who hasn’t been to the beach in two years even though it’s only a 15-minute drive from their home.”

Sometimes, when life cuts off your options, you scrounge, like those in Gaza who comb through destroyed buildings for rubble to turn into construction materials. Other times, you act as if nothing has changed. If you are a scientist with no functioning laboratory, you still put on your white coat for work. And if you are a fisherman in Gaza, barred by the Israeli Navy from going out far enough in your own waters to catch much, you still get in the boat and get fish — but these days you buy it from your Egyptian neighbors at sea and haul it home for sale.

A version of this article appears in print on June 13, 2010, on Page WK3 of the New York edition with the headline: Gaza, Through Fresh Eyes. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe